German Glass Glitter and another WELCOME!

First off, a hearty Welcome to another follower and fellow artist, Marianne, and you need to visit her blog, marianne's art blog and see the lovely things she is doing! Super use of mediums!
Second, off to my experiments with the collaged background I did during the tutorial a while back and also something I discovered quite by accident about German Glass Glitter.

Here is where I am with the piece---things are coming along; you probably need to click for a larger image so it shows up well enough. Now, the problem was I wanted the glass glitter for the halo, but as you can see below.......

....this stuff was TOO BIG. There are a couple of sizes available but at the time I ordered the gold, only the larger was in stock. And don't get me wrong--the large works great for a more textural application, but this needed more finesse.

So my little brain pondered, "What can I do with this too-big glitter?" All the time, somewhere in the deep curves and recesses of my cerebellum, there is a single synapse firing.......

......"It's GLASS Anne. GLASS BREAKS. Wrap it in something and take a hammer to it!" So I folded down a sheet of waxed paper (which I cannot function without, period) until each side had four layers. I put a small amount of the glitter in the waxed paper and........

......wailed away with a tack hammer! Make sure and hold the sides down so the glitter does not escape. You can't do that and take a photo at the same time......you understand.

When I say hammer, whack it until it is stuck in the paper, because it is a bit resistant. I tried a ballpein hammer and that did not do well at all....it was too heavy and cumbersome. A cobbler's hammer would work well too.

When you are done, you should have something that looks like the side by side below.......

...the soft, powdery glitter on the left and the original on the right. Word of caution: this can get in your fingers twice as fast as the regular glass glitter!!! Use a brush to clean the excess from waxed paper and table, NOT your fingers! (don't ask........)

The final photo gives an idea of how much better the small size works in comparison to the coarse size. Plus, you can purchase only the larger size, then reduce it to what you need. I stored my extra in a glass jar with a tight fitting lid.

I am hoping, in between all the work that MUST be done, to wrap this project up soon and have a completed photo along with a pic of the background before anything other than paper was applied. Should be fun to look at!

Hope this has sparked some ideas---I see this tiny stuff on all sorts of decorations for the holidays; just make sure to use a good heavy glue and don't have small children or pets around when using it, because it sort of resembles colored sugar.

Now---GO MAKE ART!!!!

I bid you,

Pax.